First of all, it wasn’t a spa experience. Yes there was a sauna and it was the air. My hair began to spring into wet coils as soon as we got off of the plane in Iquitos and by the end of twelve days, my comb just hooked on and refused to budge. Our skin was glowing with the humidity.

The reason I had chosen the Refugio was that all of the forums I had visited recommended Scott’s retreat as a place to get healing plant treatments and to really live in a natural way. The housing was rustic with cold water gravity tank fed showers. Most of the time we were there the electricity did not work so the lighting was a small candle in a large room or an even tinier flashlight that I had brought with me. One luxury was the real, indoor toilet that flushed. I came to really appreciate that feature.

What motivated my decision to go to Peru was my experience in the hospital two weeks previously. Once again my bowel had blocked up and it was twisted. At any moment it could have exploded and taken me with it. Tired. I was tired of living in such a way that I was always dealing with the Rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, new growths moving toward cancer. I was exhausted. The marriage had broken up in a nasty manner while I was recovering from major surgery and was weakened and dependent. The issue of my body betraying me, my relationship betraying me had me in such depressive energy that I was honestly not caring. It was all I could do, this life. Time for something else.

As I lay on the bathroom floor in the hospital, I was at the bottom. Tired of being alone, tired of being unwell I had no urge to keep going. It was then that I heard the voice say to me ,”You are deeply depressed.” Oh. I thought, my mind isn’t working properly. Then I remembered the books and articles I had read about ayahusaca tea from South America. My history of childhood abuse had made me a target for manipulative people who came into my life for shelter. Each breakup had cost me financially. While I had worked since I was eight years old, I was impoverished. Each break up left me financially weaker. I lay on the floor and felt the weakness of my body, the emptiness of my life, the exhaustion from the struggle to keep going.

Once I was discharged, I started doing research and began reading books, articles and forums about the healing effects of ayahusaca on the neurological processing of information. The urge for control had not made my life better. The necessity to work hard had not made me financially or physically strong. My desire to give love and be a supportive, loving partner had not been effective. This had to be the bottom. I had to rebuild my anxiety centre, to lift my mind into a quieter state.

the day in October I decided "enough"

So I made the reservation for the Rufgio that Scott had established in the rain forest outside of the town of Iquitos on the Amazon River. Another adventure was begun. The way I had inhabited my life was shallow and driven. It was time to open to the universe.